Mexican artist exhibits response to migrant crisis

A travelling exhibit intended as an artistic response to the global migrant crisis has opened in the capital of Italy, ground zero of the European refugee phenomenon.

Mexican artist Gustavo Aceves spent six years making the sculptures featured in the exhibit that opened Thursday amid the ruins of ancient Rome.

The works consist of misshapen horses, many placed in boat frames, with exposed rib cages full of skulls and sides branded with numbers.

Aceves says the global response to the migrant crisis has been a "disgrace" and that the building of walls by nations trying to keep refugees out "speaks of a clamorous moral and ethical decline."

He said the exhibit, entitled "Lapidarium," is about that decline.

The exhibit will move from Rome to Greece and then Turkey. It is scheduled to end in 2018 in Mexico.